


Auctoritas

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Series: Imperium [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Communication Failure, Established Relationship, Imperialistic Intention, Light and Transient Smut, Lightsabers, M/M, Treasonous Intent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:44:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6627664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Ren snatched it back. Stopped dead in his tracks, Hux could only stare. And Ren’s face had flushed, colour blotched high on his cheeks, eyes narrowed to black slits.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“I am not discussing this with you.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Hux had not worked his way to general – had not embroiled himself in this scheme to be <b>emperor</b> – to be denied. “But it’s obviously unstable,” he said, lips twisted downward. “The lateral plasma vents alone—”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Hux.”</i>
</p>
<p> <i>“Ren.” What he saw in the other man’s face now was not anger, though it travelled too close to its event horizon. “Ren, I’m trying to be <b>helpful</b>.”</i></p>
<p>
  <b>Based on this prompt for the kylux May exchange:</b>
</p>
<p> <i>Hux wants to be Emperor. Any Emperor needs a knight. A knight needs a blade. A functioning one. A perfect one. Hux makes it his job to personally get Kylo a new, whole crystal for a new lightsaber; it's a job he might royally fail at it because he has no clue about the world past his office desk...</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Auctoritas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ange_de_la_Mort](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ange_de_la_Mort/gifts).



> Though this is a standalone story, if you're curious about the arrangement between Kylo Ren and Hux, I based it off what happened between them in [this story here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5839519). You don't have to read it to understand this one, though; I used it for ease of background in this story, so I had somewhere to start from.
> 
> To Ange_de_le_Mort: I hope this story is at least something like what you wanted. I got so distracted by the lightsaber part of the prompt that I wandered fairly far from the point, unfortunately, but I hope there's something for you to enjoy here, even if it's just a little. <3

He was always so very careful to never allow anyone to see anything of his body, nor the person who dwelt within its dark confines. Hux himself had not seen any expanse of his skin whatsoever until some time after their initial acquaintance; only Snoke’s offhand word had assured him that Kylo Ren was in fact human.

Now, the helmet was gone. Ren stood shirtless and barefoot, the long lines of his face folded into an intense mask of concentration. For his own part Hux stood somewhat beyond his sightline, but was not fool enough to think himself unobserved. Shifting his own weight from one foot to the other, then back again, he resisted temptation. Yet every moment his gaze lingered upon Kylo Ren made it difficult not to reach down, to adjust the position of a half-hard cock beneath the pristine lines of his uniform. It simply was not what he was here for.

Ren took his time about his exercises, and turned to him only when he reached some state of completion Hux could not have guessed at. He loped across the floor, long body languid and sheened with sweat. “General,” and when he stood before him it was utterly without the ceremony Hux would have expected of any other of his men. “What can I do for you?”

Hux smiled. There were many things Kylo Ren might do for him. Since they had come to an understanding some months beforehand, they had also come to know each other _very_ well indeed – and in very many various ways. Even now, Hux’s eyes skipped over the curve of Ren’s exposed shoulders; his own tightened with the memory of the first time he’d braced himself against them, lowering himself down, taking Ren into his own body. The worshipful way Ren had stared up at him then even now stoked low embers in his belly. It had been a gift, given with sly smile: Ren had then taken it with a willing pleasure that had startled them both.

A low clearing of his throat, to steady his thoughts; still his voice grated harsher than was its wont. “Your saber.”

An eyebrow raised, and despite Ren’s habitually expressive features the rest of his face remained utterly still. Perhaps that alone was indication enough of some unspoken line Hux had drawn unwittingly close to.

“What of it?”

“I wish to examine it.”

His expression now flattened to absolute unreadability. “Oh.”

“Ren.” Already he could see that this was not a path to be pursued. But Hux had chosen it, and kept his voice even as he now stated and did not ask, “May I examine your saber.”

 Ren’s dark eyes blinked, just once. Their agreement had no written rules of engagement, but there were certain understandings on both sides. The saber had never once entered into their conversations. From that Hux supposed Ren’s disinclination was not unexpected – nor entirely unwarranted. So few of the things existed, nowadays. And his in particular was a peculiar example of its species.

Much as their interactions usually involved some kind of verbal altercation – and that had only become more common, rather than less, with their new accord – Hux did not speak, knowing one would result should he press his corner. It fell to Ren to surrender. And he did so only when he looked away, voice muffled as he began to massage his hands over the long muscles of one calf.

“Why?”

Hux kept his arms beneath the fall of his shouldered greatcoat, crossing them now over his chest. “I’m curious about it.” Ren had by now lowered himself to greater stretches, long body laid out before the general; Hux tilted his head, unabashed in his visual admiration. “It is your favoured weapon,” he added, too casual by far. “And if you are to be mine, well, then I should understand how best to wield you both, correct?”

With one hand braced upon the floor, Ren levered himself fully upright again. A faint flush coloured his cheeks. It could be waved away as lingering exertion. They both knew it was otherwise. And now Ren scowled, sudden and deep as his right hand moved down, fingers fluttering over where the shining hilt would have been clipped to his belt, had he been wearing it.

“I understand the saber,” he said finally, rough and ragged; his dark eyes were the abyssal plain of starless space. “Is that not enough?” Two steps closer, and they stood nose to nose. “Do you not trust your knight?”

The proximity of him shivered through his skin, thrummed through his veins, pooled deep in his quick-beating heart. “A good general understands his armies,” Hux returned with all the relaxed authority he used for higher command briefings. “And in turn, said general might then also understand all that they might do.” This time Hux drew closer, one uniform-clad thigh slipping up between Ren’s own. The words grazed his skin, passed from his own lips to Ren’s still mouth. “What _can_ you do, Kylo Ren?”

Hux could almost _taste_ his arousal upon the low groan that escaped his lips; large hands rose, came to hover in a loose cradle of Hux’s face. But Ren did not touch. He never did, without permission. And while his voice remained silent the dark eyes never once left his: searching and knowing alike, the pupils wide and very, very black.

Hux smiled. He might have said he had taken pity on the man, had Ren’s erection not been so closely pressed against his own. “Would you like to kiss me?”

“Yes.”

Hux smiled wider. “Then give me your saber.”

Even without any training in Ren’s sorcery, Hux knew the breaking of a spell; Ren withdrew several feet in a second, face turned away, spine gone stiff and crooked as he hunched over himself. “What is this fascination with my saber?” he asked, the muttering only half-directed at Hux as Ren crossed the training room; Hux watched him go, appreciating the new angle as Ren bent over a bench to retrieve his robes.

“What is this reluctance to let me touch it?” he called, knowing Ren would have heard him if he’d just kept it in his mind. To his credit, Ren actually answered aloud.

“You don’t understand the Force.”

A child’s petulance underlay genuine hurt. Making note of both, Hux kept his arms folded beneath his coat, stepped at a quick military clip until he joined Ren once more. “Well, no. I don’t.” Given Ren how now seated himself on the bench, adjusting the greaves of his boots, Hux could take a rare opportunity scowl down at him. “That was the basis of our understanding, I thought. You bring your magic, and I make something useful of it.”

“I don’t need you to be _useful_.”

Hux’s lips curled; though he’d been intimately familiar with Ren’s sulks for some time now, his officer’s training and rank took particular offense whenever Ren wouldn’t just _look_ at him. “But you need a master,” he said, simple, more cutting than intended. “You had Skywalker, and then Snoke. And now you have me. I simply wish—”

The hand on his throat came so quick it denied all reflex. Driven up against the wall, Hux held very still, fixed a cold gaze upon Ren. The grip did little to impair his breathing, and Hux could feel no telltale pressure of the Force against his skin. Little more than a warning, then – though a potent one. And Ren stood before him as if some shadow brought to furious life, arm stretched out, dark eyes the open void of a collapsing star.

“You are not my master,” he said, the low rumble of thunder over distant mountains. Hux smiled, and did not move.

“Perhaps not.” And the smile coiled tight and still as he moistened his lips, felt Ren’s eyes fix upon them as he murmured, “But I _will_ be your emperor.”

Ren pressed harder; beneath his fingers, Hux could feel the ache of fresh bruising. “Unless I change my mind.” The words came thoughtful and yet somehow flat, though he still did not look away from Hux’s mouth. “I could tell Snoke what you plan.”

“You could,” he said, agreeable and light for all the external pressure against his vocal cords. “But what good would that do you? You were obviously unhappy beneath him, to come to me.” If he’d had the ability to move, he’d had drawn their bodies close together, would have fitted his hips into the cradle of Ren’s own. Instead, he only sighed as much as Ren would allow, their eyes fixed upon one another now. “And you are so much _happier_. When you are under me.”

Fury sparked in the very air around them, the heat and metallic taste of it harsh against his skin. Still Hux smiled even around the pain of it, the flickering edges of his vision, the strange silver stars sparking across his corneas.

Ren never once looked away – not until it ended, his hand falling, the strange barometric pressure dropping like a stone as the static dissipated to nothing. With his weight fully upon his own feet again, Hux turned, muffled a light cough in one fist. There would be little to be done about any residual hoarseness, but then perhaps it would just serve to remind Ren of his inability to silence the general at all.

And Ren, seated again before the untidy pile of his clothing, said nothing, did nothing. The hunched back was all the conversation he offered. Only with great difficulty did Hux resist the urge to reach out, to run his fingers over it, to count the ladder of his vertebrae. He’d always thought Ren would be more responsive to gentle touch, rather than cruel punishment.

“You know where I am, Ren,” he said, voice made harsh only by Ren’s own fingers. “Come see me, when you are ready to behave as an adult about these things.”

Hux did not expect it to be that very evening. It was long past the beginning of the fifth shift, and he prepared himself for sleep. In the ‘fresher, barefoot and down to shirtsleeves, he still heard the low chime of a request at his door. It slid open before he could react; for not the first time, he cursed the whimsy that had led him to gift Ren an all-access code to his chambers.

Hux pushed his hand back through his hair, though it did nothing at all to reorder the mess his nightly ablutions had made of it. Briefly he allowed his reflection a scowl, then flattened his expression to something more neutral before stepping out of the small chamber.

Ren had not entered his bedroom; that struck him as odd, given the man had little patience for social niceties. The moment sex had entered the equation, Ren had integrated himself into every part of Hux’s private life – and his quarters. The ‘fresher alone had likely seen more deviant escapades than the rest of the officer’s quarters on the ship combined. He had no idea where Ren’s sexual stamina had found previous outlet, considering he’d claimed to be a virgin when he’d first come to Hux.

Ren had remained out in the living area, but that alone was not the real surprise. Hux had simply not expected to find Ren seated on the floor, the great length of him made compact, folded neatly in upon himself. He had but rarely seen Ren in meditation, and though this stance was clearly different the composed state could not but remind him of it. The dark head remained bowed as Hux drew near, the too-long hair hanging across his face. Before his knees lay a length of silk, dark and smooth against the grey panelling.

“General.” Still Ren did not look up; Hux had the uncomfortable feeling that he had closed his eyes long ago. “Come, sit with me.”

Reluctance held him immobile for only the most fleeting of moments before body memory had him moving closer with usual military rhythm. Rolling up his sleeves, he paused just before Ren. One ungloved hand indicated the space before him, on the other side of the cloth. With brow furrowed Hux lowered himself to the floor, took a cross-legged position, and finally frowned.

“Ren—”

A raised hand, palm outward – Hux quietened, though the frown only engraved itself deeper. Then, from the folds of his robe like a genuine sorcerer about his art, Ren produced the saber. With slow veneration he laid it between them on the silken pad. There it lay quiescent, shimmering and strange, even in the glaring ordinariness of the _Finalizer_ ’s ambient light.

“You may touch.”

Instinct demanded he say something sharp, vicious; so often an attack gave a better result than watchful defence. But Hux kept such thoughts – and words – to himself. Instead he reached forward with a reverence he had not been aware of cultivating, closing fingers about its grip. In his hand, it bore an unexpected weight: far more than its construction ought to have created.

“You made this.”

“Yes.” With his legs folded under him, hands palm-open and flat upon his thighs, Ren resembled nothing so much as a statue before a dark shrine. Only the glittering of his eyes reminded Hux that he was still flesh beneath. “It is a ritual.”

Hux looked down again at the hilt, told himself it was because he had come to see the thing. “A Jedi ritual.”

“I am no Jedi, Hux.”

He spoke slower than was even his usual wont, words heavy as if dragged from some place deep within. For his own part, Hux kept his own tone dry as dust, and did not look up. “I had noticed.” Turning it over in his hands, again, now held it up to the light. A curious thing, indeed; slightly more than the length of both hands when fisted, a double-handed grip. The crossguard vents would still be pressed uncomfortably close to skin, gloved or not. Now holding it in one hand alone, the fingers of the other worked in delicate tracery about the cooling vanes, skimming light over the ignition button.

“Don’t touch that.”

A light snort. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Perhaps not.” But now something dangerously close to amusement rumbled beneath his words when he added, “You’re at least not pointing the blade end at your face.”

“I did learn something of trigger discipline during my many, many years at the academy, Ren.” His own easy humour evaporated into gravitas when he looked up, met those dark eyes. “May I see inside?”

The question gave Ren clear pause, though his hesitation was but momentary – when Ren devoted himself to a cause of action, rarely could he be diverted from it. That knowledge was a warm curl low in his abdomen even as Ren reached forward, their fingertips brushing together as he retrieved his weapon.

 Though Hux had been aware from the beginning of the vicious grace with which Ren fought, he did not expect at all the careful ease with which Ren removed the cover – though a faint blush rose in his cheeks, given he knew the delicate work those fingers were capable of, in more intimate application.

There was little time to think of such as Ren now laid the opened hilt over his palms, offering it up like a votive gift. Hux received it with a frown, averting his gaze from Ren’s own and focusing instead upon the hilt. A bright crystal lay in its cradle – quiescent now, of course. But the fine series of cracks in its faint scarlet matrix, a spiralling spiderweb of vulnerability, almost seemed to pulse with an impossible lifeblood just waiting to be spilled in hot arterial spray.

Ren did not permit such exposure for long. Hux had expected as much, though made no effort to mask his disappointment as Ren slid the casing back into place. Yet Ren returned it to Hux one last time, gaze watchful and silent as he twisted it in his hands. Finally, Hux surrendered, and shook his head. Ren only frowned.

“Something bothers you?”

Again, Hux turned it over, found no answer in the crude components and their peculiar arrangement into a startlingly serviceable device. “Did you receive no instruction?”

“What?”

“In its construction.” Impatience entered his tone, an ever-growing list forming in his mind, demanding explanation and answer. “It’s functional, obviously, and I have no personal experience given this is even the first I have even _seen_ , but surely these power field conductors are being regularly overloaded, if you are running a wire along the external surface—”

Ren snatched it back. Stopped dead in his tracks, Hux could only stare. And Ren’s face had flushed, colour blotched high on his cheeks, eyes narrowed to black slits.

“I am not discussing this with you.”

Hux had not worked his way to general – had not embroiled himself in this scheme to be _emperor_ – to be denied. “But it’s obviously unstable,” he said, lips twisted downward. “The lateral plasma vents alone—”

“Hux.”

“Ren.” What he saw in the other man’s face now was not anger, though it travelled too close to its event horizon. “Ren, I’m trying to be _helpful_.”

That only gave him silence, though the white-knuckled grip Ren held about the hilt gave out clear enough warning. But then Hux had been schooled in the balance of risk and payoff a long, long time ago.

“You do realise how much of a hand I had in the design of Starkiller, yes?”

Ren shifted, head bowing forward as if that alone marked the end of their conversation: a monk returned to his meditation. “I have already made my feelings clear on this subject.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Hux breathed in deep, held it still, and then pressed to his feet. As he moved to one of the couches, retrieving his datapad, he flicked up an engineering programme where he could begin sketching out some loose notes. In theory it would probably enough that he had just seen the damn thing; certainly he would always have needed to obtain information regarding more modern examples, considering rumour had it Ren’s own saber was based on a Scourge-era weapon.

When he glanced up, several moments later, it was to see that Ren had not moved at all. Ren had told him on numerous occasions that he was about as Force sensitive as a womp rat, but Hux could sense a dark cloud about the other man, roiling and uneasy.

“Where are the crystals obtained from?”

It at least turned his attention elsewhere; Ren glanced up to him with an arch look, though his eyes had a distant sheen. “If you are asking if I know where the crystals in this very ship come from, then you will only be disappointed.” Something close to disgust hovered there as he added, “ _Those_ crystals were sourced somewhere in the Unknown Realms. I took my crystal when I was still under Skywalker. And I did so at a very great distance from the First Order – in physical measurement, if not psychic.”

Such words could not help but force an uncomfortable shift along his spine. Even before the genesis of this treasonous plot, the thought of Snoke being able to sift about in the minds of his underlings had never sat well with Hux. The Supreme Leader was a mystic, but the First Order was a well-oiled machine. Even without Hux’s treasonous plans, at some point their inherent incompatibilities would have been forced to an impasse.

_And the irony is, that point is the convergence of General and Knight._

“So you don’t know where the crystals in the ship come from?” Hux asked, for all he knew it pointless; Ren shifted on his heels, almost smiled.

“No. Snoke saw no reason to give me this information.” Something of their old rivalry shimmered there, the gloating knowledge of a point taken. “I assume this means he did not give it to you, either.”

Hux only returned his attention to the dim glow of his datapad, tapping the head of the stylus against the screen, frowning at the loose schematic he had produced. “But why did you take a broken one? Was it the only one you could find? Surely even _you_ could have done better.”

The faint laughter died almost as soon as it began. “I know you think little of my patience,” he said, actual tone unreadable, “but it was not that.” Ren shifted to his feet in one loose, elegant movement; for the first time, Hux realised he had removed his boots. “Kyber crystals can be synthesised, though that is usually done only when there is no other choice.” Said boots had been left by the door; Ren pulled them to him with the faint flick of one hand, eyes still upon Hux alone. “It is preferable to find a natural source, and allow the Force to guide the pilgrim to the suitable choice.”

Hux’s eyes flickered from the doors to where Ren had taken a seat upon the opposite couch; despite the lack of sensitivity, the casual use of such power for so mundane a function crawled over his skin. “And you got the broken one,” he said, markedly casual. “Why is it, that Skywalker did not see what would befall him and his fledgling school?”

Ren paused, fingers white-knuckled over his boots. Then, he resumed. “The Force is not a scrying tool.” He said it sharp, brooking no argument. “And there was perhaps a degree of wilful blindness. But we are not here to discuss my uncle.”

Sitting very still, reclined upon his chair, Hux smiled. “I will not allow sentiment to cloud my judgement.” And indeed, he allowed the words to veer so very close to _gentle_ when he added, “If you betray me, Ren, you will rue the day you brought my wrath down upon yourself.”

“And if you are dead?”

His lower lip curled upward, both eyebrows raised. “I was under the belief that the Jedi believed in ghosts.” Flicking his eyes down to the holopad he frowned as he noted an error, immediately beginning to repair. “I’m sure I could see my way to haunting you for the rest of eternity.”

The laughter startled Hux enough that he looked up. Ren was already standing, shaking his head. “I have things I must do.”

He only snorted. “Well, don’t let me trouble you from disturbing my downtime, Ren.”

But Ren had yet one more surprise, this evening; Hux hadn’t even heard him approach when the gloved hand came about his chin, forcing his attention upon the kiss: hungry, decidedly damp, and a promise of things to come.

“Shall I come back later?” Ren breathed, against his lips; hot, with the faintest taste of plasma and ozone. Hux shivered, his fingers too tight upon the screen of his datapad.

“I have things I must myself do.”

“What, sleep?” And before Hux could answer, the dark eyes crinkled at their corners. “Yes. Yes, you do need more sleep.” Straightening, one hand ruffled through his hair before being snatched back out of biting range. “You’re very pale, General. You need to be planetside more often.”

Hux could very well have said something choice about Ren’s own pallor, given he bared no skin whatsoever. But he had disappeared through the door in a flurry of robes and a hiss of hydraulics. With an artful roll of his eyes, despite a distinct lack of appreciative audience, Hux returned to his holopad and the musings upon its dim screen.

 

*****

 

Going down into the heart of the ship always felt to him as a homecoming. He’d made it his business from the beginning to know the entire length and breadth of her. At his side marched one of the lead weapons engineers, a young and perky thing with dark curly hair and eyes that darted about so quickly it was easy to think she had some nervous twitch. Rather, she was a gatherer of information, an incessant observer. It still made his skin crawl, even if her brilliance left her unmatched by any other engineer of her class aboard the ship.

But her restless energy gave her distinct advantage in other ways; the many turrets housing the turbolaser arrays were scattered about the ship, and had her constantly moving. Though their engineering and construction had been to exacting standards, they required regular maintenance. Even now she stopped at random moments to check outputs, datapad chittering in her hand; had he needed to keep track of her an entire day, he’d have found himself quite exhausted.

She talked as fast as she moved, her accent a dreadful common thing that he nonetheless understood with an ease he preferred not to examine too carefully. The information she imparted gave him little insight; while he enjoyed the technical jargon, she was only elaborating on concepts he already knew of. It was at least a distraction from the usual sort of conversation a general of his type and assignation usually found himself privy to.

The trip did at least solidify his decision to leave them be; he felt no real temptation to remove any of the crystals from the ship. They were of high quality, and military grade at that, but even then he did not think it appropriate. These crystals had been part of a larger entity, a pivotal yet tiny cog in a great machine. With such history they were hardly suitable for Hux’s intended purpose.

It did not surprise him that the engineer also had little clear idea as to where the crystals had been obtained. Finally taking his leave of her, he thankfully slowed his step to something more suited to human lifeforms and began his ascension to the higher decks alone.

While not questioned directly as to the source of his own crystal, Ren had made it perfectly clear he had no intention of telling Hux where that place had been. Hux supposed it didn’t matter; he was not looking to create a weapon for a Jedi, after all. And from what little Ren had said, he had obtained the thing while in Jedi training. Small wonder he had ended with a weapon both unstable and intrinsically broken.

It only made him all the more determined to find him a weapon more suited to purpose as the righthand of the new Emperor.

Outside access to the holonet had always been strictly monitored for those of the fallen Galactic Empire: both for purposes of propaganda and information control, and also to limit the number of access points to outside interference. As a general, Hux had more leeway than most, and soon used it to garner some information on saber design.

Still, he had to take care to limit the amount obtained. The conversation with the engineer about the military crystals could be easily explained away as a general familiarising himself with his own weapons. Only to a lesser degree could he explain this research away as concern about the stability of Ren’s own weapon. While the sheer number of requisitions made in the name of damage it caused were indeed Hux’s problem, the weapon itself was Ren’s own. And Ren himself was not under the direct command of the general.

A large amount of data downloaded could indicate obsession. And even as a gifted engineer, General Hux had duties that trumped any hobby interest in weapons he would never himself have need to use.

The one which appealed most proved a fine and sleek design. Hux could himself build the shell of it easily enough; all the necessary components save one could be located either aboard the ship, or in the great storage vaults drilled deep into the permafrost of Starkiller base.

And so, in the small hours of his off-shifts, Hux began to build. Below, Starkiller progressed as planned, and Ren went about his little missions. The entire ship would breathe a collective sigh of relief every time he went off in his Upsilon. Hux shared in that, though he did have different sighs of his own to indulge in when Ren returned.

For a virgin, Ren had proved a most apt pupil. Hux had never much enjoyed the task of teaching, but when one learned with such zeal and enthusiasm, testing his knowledge became something both of them would look forward to.

But Hux had not come out this evening cycle looking for sex. In one of the disused storage bays of the starboard hangar, wrapped against the chill in his gaberwool greatcoat, he leaned back against the wall and watched Ren about his katas. He had not been invited, had simply noted the security clearance and allowed his own curiosity to lead him down.

Ren did not acknowledge him until clearly almost complete in his work. The plasma blade had slowed, its red gleam alive upon the sheen of his pale skin. His dark eyes remained fixed on some unseen opponent as he paused, held a fine pose that managed to be the pinnacle of both strength and grace.

“Are you still obsessing over my weapon, General?”

He yearned for the taste of tabac on his lips, burning deep in his lungs. The half packet remained untouched in his deep pocket; Ren had never liked the scent of his cigarras. “Am I not allowed to be curious?”

For the first time Ren flicked his gaze over, sardonic and amused both as he extinguished the blade. “It borders on obsession.”

Hux thinned his lips, and his tone; it left him sounding so much a teacher at the very limits of his patience. “For one so childish, you have strikingly little patience with the same qualities in others.”

Ren paused in where he secured the hilt to his belt. “What?”

With a snort, Hux shifted properly upright. “Perhaps I just don’t like to be denied something.” And though his hands did not move, his voice was a siren call, beckoning Ren closer as he said, cool and clear, “It just makes me want it more.”

And Ren came as if summoned, bare-chested and barefoot, drawing to a halt only when their bodies were but a frantic moment apart. His lips curled, breath hot and too close by half. “I would have thought you beyond such childish games, General.”

“Well.” He tilted his chin upward, knew his eyes would be as the blue-riddled icefall near the external outpost of Starkiller. “I am the youngest general the Order has ever seen,” he said, very clear, very simple. “Not even the Imperials had one so youthful as me.”

“And you are so very youthful.” Ren’s head had bent too close, the light scent of his hair lazy over the muskier smell of his sweat. And his lips pressed to the place where jaw met ear, tongue light over the skin before he whispered, “Pretty, too.”

The temptation to turn his head, to bite down hard, was dizzying in its desire; like this, with so much skin before him, Hux was as a thirsting man but moments from a desert oasis. Instead, reached up, pulled his hair, just enough. “Careful, Ren,” he murmured with a knife’s edge, “you are bordering perhaps a little too close to subordination.”

“Subdue me, then.”

“Oh.” Teasing, fingers tracing along the ridged planes of his hard abdomen, Hux smiled. “Am I allowed… _unfettered_ …access to another weapon, perhaps?”

With a low laugh, Ren took Hux’s hand, guiding it past the loose waistband of his trousers until it closed about his cock. “Do you believe you can handle it?”

Hux gave him a disapproving look, from beneath half-lowered lids. “Is it likely to go off in my hand, then?”

“Perhaps.” With a lazy thrust, he gathered his lower lip between his teeth, drew in a hissing breath. Then, he chuckled. “And this one, you _can_ risk putting too close to your face.” His kiss was sloppy, strange, altogether far too endearing to be sensible. “You might enjoy it, in fact.”

The trouble was, really, that he did. Many people believed the act of cock-sucking to be inherently demeaning to the one who performed it, though Hux had never thought so. To his mind, it was yet another kaleidoscope shift in the ever-turning balance of power.

It took but moments to bring him off; Ren had proved from the beginning to be exquisitely over-sensitive, and highly responsive to a few careful words on Hux’s part. Hux merely had to judge if Ren sought pleasure or humiliation; here, all he’d had to do was whisper how lovely he was on his knees, lips taut around his emperor’s cock as he swallowed him deep, and Ren had choked on his climax, drawing back only to have Hux’s own pleasure splattered across his damp eyelashes and lips.

Then, they moved on; they had made the recent discovery that while Hux himself enjoyed rimming, it held little interest for Ren. But despite his own ambivalence to receiving the act, Ren currently lay upon his stomach, opened before Hux as the other man showed him what he liked best. Though Hux’s work didn’t take him to completion, leaving him a trembling mess, when Ren attempted to make practical use of the demonstration he appeared unfocused, uncertain. Hux finally rolled over, pushing at his shoulder with one knee.

“You really have no idea what you are doing, do you.”

Ren sat back on his heels with a scowl, though his face was half-turned, sweat-damp hair hanging in his eyes. “Do you want me to learn how to do this or not?”

“Let me teach you, again.” At the put-upon look, Hux gave a light, calculated shrug. “There is something you could teach me, in return.”

This time he looked Hux directly in the eyes, face gone very still. “Are you still obsessed with my lightsaber?” Hux went very still, and very cold. Ren only rolled his eyes. “I saw plans of one. On your desk.”

“What were you doing, looking at my desk?”

“Trying to work out what was sticking into my hip last time you bent me over it, actually.” Propping himself up on his elbows, he seemed strangely tired; if there was one thing that he rarely saw upon the Knight, it was exhaustion. Ren called it a gift of the Force. Hux just assumed it was pure bull-headed stupidity mixed with a strong dash of stubbornness.

“Hux,” he said, quiet. And even as he itched to dig his hands into that non-regulation hair, drawing up one knee to smash it into the equally ridiculous nose, Hux kept his frustration inside.

“What?”

For a moment, he struggled, and clearly so; Ren’s face was so often a direct mirror of his mind’s turmoil. And then, he sighed. “Why do you care about it so much?”

“I don’t.”

The challenge held strong for a long moment. And then he rolled his eyes, and rolled over. “All right, then. Whatever. So just show me what my emperor wants, then.”

And even as his cock twitched to see Ren, thighs spread wide and ass arched high, for not the first time Hux wondered what the hell he was doing.

 

*****

 

Alone in the dark, save for the single drafting lamp positioned over the centre of his desk, Hux opened the canister. Cradled within, swaddled in linen and the wool of some long-dead creature, was what Hux knew to be the genuine article. He’d known it the moment the canister had been brought to him upon the bridge that afternoon, an urgent delivery that could only be placed by its courier into his hands alone.

He’d heard it then: a low pulse, a song from a distant room in a language thought long dead. Even with Ren before him, promised to him, Hux had never really thought of the Force except in the broadest of senses. A power source was intrinsic to itself; Hux had always been more interested in constructing the mechanics to control it, to bend its power to his own will by the laws of nature he understood.

It was surprisingly delicate, a small and amber thing. Raising it between his fingers, silhouetted against the viewport, he swallowed. Such a strange shivering sensation in his hand. Ren used a red blade – that of a Sith, by tradition. Having had little experience, Hux had no way to be sure – but this blade would surely be golden. Like a coronet. Like a crown.

No matter the intended result, Hux preferred to keep as few people involved in clandestine matters as possible. That had not been workable, with this; many of his contacts had not understood the true goal of his machinations, but they had still been part of them. It had taken almost half a year, by the cycles on which the _Finalizer_ ran. But the kyber crystal lay in his hands now: passed along a secret chain, one that could so easily be yanked tight about the necks of those who might try to pull back on it.

He had long ago researched how to install the crystal in the saber hilt, found it to be both an exacting process, and a demanding one. He had no time for it, now; other matters loomed at hand, not least of all the coming completion of Starkiller. But later, in the dark, in the small hours of the shifts usually given over to sleep, Hux did what was necessary.

Then, and only then, did he call out to him.

“Ren.” His voice crackled through the holo, calm and easy. “I need you.”

He had given no indication of time, of purpose, of urgency. Yet within moments Ren slipped into his quarters, mask already off, hair in disarray and a frown upon his generous lips. A complaint might have escaped them, had he not caught the characteristic low hum, the bright plasma gleam in the low lighting of Hux’s living quarters.

And his eyes were the golden burn of Starkiller’s preferred prey when he swallowed hard, said low and strange, “Hux. What have you _done_.”

And he smiled, cut through the air; it was a strange sensation indeed, as if the fabric of reality itself insisted it guide the path of the blade. “It is a gift.”

He remained in shadow. “Where did you get this?”

“I made it.”

“You are no Jedi.”

“And neither are you.”

Now he came close, steps silent upon the floor to the point where it seemed as if he glided. “I did not make my saber to become a Jedi.”

“But you were one when you made it.”

And he closed his eyes, expression pained, as if Hux had actually punched him in the face. “I _wasn’t_ ,” he said, and now he just sounded tired, as if he had said the same thing over and over again only to find he’d been preaching to an empty room. “Hux.”

His hand tightened about the hilt. Once, when he’d been young, he’d become so involved in a piece of homework for one class he’d somehow forgotten the speech due in another. And on that morning, called to the front of the classroom, he’d stood before the blank faces of his classmates with a blanker mind, and the disapproval of the instructor heavy upon bowed shoulders.

He was that child again now when he said it, too high and too sudden. “It’s _broken_.” And he grimaced, eyes caught on the too-bright gleam of his own blade. “Your saber. It’s not…it’s not _right_.”

Ren only stared. But it was something worse than annoyance, or scorn, or frustration. It was the razor-sharp edge of pity, and it made him bow his head, stomach twisted in knots.

“I just…I thought…”

“Hux.” And he sighed. “You cannot gift a saber.”

“But…” He glanced up, eyes hot and too large for their orbits, mouth curled in on itself. “…there are stories. I’ve read them. They say that sabers are passed down.”

“From warrior to warrior, yes.”

The bitterness hit him as a wave, cold and clarifying. With one swift click he depowered the blade, kept his fingers tight about the gleaming hilt. It felt surprisingly cold in his hands. But then, they were cold too as he said, light as ice, “Oh, yes. I do apologise. I forgot that _I_ am no warrior?”

Ren held out his hand. For all Hux had made it for him, he very much did not want to hand it over. With a grimace, he did; Ren’s own expression was not much better. “It has not yet been blooded, no.” Something between confusion and anger twisted Ren’s strange face now, his long fingers odd and skittering over the perfect curves and arcs of the durasteel hilt. “Where did you get the kyber crystal from? Did you hack it off one of the crystals in the turbolaser arrays?”

Hux only stared at him. Hating him. And Ren snorted, shook his head, hair a wild halo of antimatter about his pale features.

“No, no – _you_ would not take from one weapon to make another.” The leather of his gloves creaked, moving tighter yet about the hilt. “But where _did_ you get it from? They don’t exactly lay around waiting for people to pick them up.”

And Hux, his chest the strange ache of an imagined mortal wound, twisted his lips into a snarling smile. “Actually, in my reading of the Jedi process, that sounds exactly like what they do.”

And Ren snorted, the sound of one utterly content in the assumption that no peasant could understand the intricacies of their sacred vocation. Hux wanted nothing so much as to strangle him with his own ratty little cowl. “They choose their Jedi, certainly.” And he looked up, his disbelief a potent and powerful thing as he held it out to him. “But how did this one choose you?”

Hux blinked, only once. And he took it back. “How did you come by yours?”

The question invited no answer, but Ren’s eyes searched his own as if he thought to find it within Hux’s own thoughts. Ren was not exactly in his mind; he was more than aware Hux did not appreciate it even when invited. Then, he shook his head.

“You are a General of the First Order.”

Hux smiled, all teeth and promise of blood. “Yes.”

And Ren nodded, as if following a line of logic to inevitable conclusion. “You made other people search in your name,” he said, and then, very quiet, “You sat behind your desk and had it _brought_ to you.”

His rage was an exquisite thing, squirming and furious, clawing at his ribcage from where it ripped from his heart. “Yes. I did.” Two even steps backward and he opened his arms, finger upon the ignition button. “And it was so very _easy_ , Ren. Because everything I do is easy. I don’t go out and fight. I sit here and plot. And all of that is of course _nothing_ compared to what you can do.”

The strike came quick, sudden; Hux had always preferred the weight and nature of a blaster, but had been taught melee combat in any number of forms. But he was a general – and Ren, a Knight. One gloved hand snapped up, and Hux expected to be caught frozen by his damnable Force powers: mouth twisted into a snarl, bent forward, raised and ignited blade caught upon a strike never meant to take its target.

Ren held only his wrist. And as Hux stood, opened before him, entire body rigid and trembling, he smiled. “You misunderstood me.” his fingers were warm, callused, knowing. “I walked through a dozen trials to take my crystal – and so did you. But we walk in different shadows, you and I.” He drew too close, but Hux did not retreat. “I am a warrior, and you are my general.” Their eyes met, searching, his whisper more promise than apology. “He who will be my Emperor.”

Silence held its breath between them. Then, with his hand about Hux’s wrist, the grip oddly gentle now, Ren slowly lowered their arms. The hum of the exposed blade was a low and steady pulse between them; unlike the spit and fury of Ren’s saber, this was cold and cool constant burn.

And it reflected in Ren’s eyes, the yellow of a mind turned to the Sith. “This is _your_ weapon.” He spoke so light, so very easy, though his hand tightened now to leave what promised to be a bracelet of bruises about a narrow wrist. “Yours, Hux. Not mine.”

His throat had turned dry enough that he could barely croak the words aloud. “I am no Jedi.”

His mouth opened on a laugh, though one utterly without sound. “And neither am I.” Again, his fingers shifted; this time as Ren stepped behind him, one hand coming to rest upon a narrow hip while the other remained still about Hux’s trembling wrist.

“I could be your teacher.” He moved Hux’s arm in a lazy back and forth, the song of the saber a quick rise and fall of melody over low humming melody. Lips pressed to the quickening pulse in his throat when he said, soft, “Would you like me to show you how this weapon is wielded?”

“I’ve watched you do it a thousand times.”

“Ah.” The flicker of his tongue, and his brief drew in sharp. “But you don’t _know_ , Hux.” The shift of his weight pressed his pelvis against his backside; the heated length there had Hux biting back on a whine. And Ren laughed outright, gave a light little thrust. “But I believe that’s what keeps you interested.”

With a sudden violence, Hux ground back, drew a delightful choking cry from Ren’s throat even as he raised the saber himself. He had made a beautiful thing: the golden blade, born of the perfect hilt. He had been taught nothing, and sought no crystal by his own trial.

_And yet, it is mine_.

One flick of his thumb and the blade resheathed; when he tossed it aside, leaving it to clatter into a corner, it broke him free of Ren’s grip. But he did not leave his arms, turning in their circle to glare at Ren’s deep surprise.

“What are you doing?”

“Rationalising.” One hand dipped low, pressed hard against the hardness it found. “Come to bed, Ren,” he said, very light, even as his fingers outlined the ache of his cock. “You’re perfect as you are.”

He allowed no further debate, pushing himself free to make for the sleeping quarters. At its threshold he stopped, turned, looked back to where Ren yet stood startled, and still.

“But don’t bring your saber.” He smiled not with his mouth, but the glitter of his eyes. “Leave that to war.”

Ren blinked. His own smile was a slow and creeping thing. “Oh, this isn’t a war?”

“How can it be, when I’ve already won?”

For one so large, he moved startling quick; looming over Hux despite the slightness of their height difference, he crowded Hux against the door, too-long hair hanging in both their faces as he brought their lips together. “I beg to differ,” he said, throaty and hot, as one hand groped low.

And Hux ducked away, all laughing scorn even as he beckoned him closer to his bed. “Well, come beg before me here, and we shall see.”

And, with all weapons left to the world beyond this very moment, Ren came to Hux without another word.


End file.
